On the recordSeptember 22, 2020
Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Michigan for outlining the stakes for the American people. I will start tonight with the two principle reasons we gather tonight on the Senate floor. We gather on this floor tonight to reflect upon the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to pay tribute to her life of public service and to outline, as so many of our colleagues have outlined tonight, what is at stake for American families in a debate about the next Supreme Court Justice. Let me start with the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Nothing we could say tonight would do justice to her story, but her story is an American story. It is a story of hard work and struggle, a story of overcoming discrimination--discrimination that I and so many others have never faced. It is also a story of knocking down barriers for women, a story of defending workers fiercely, a story of defending voting rights, and so much more that we will talk about in the next number of days. It is also a very human story, as much as it is an American story. It is a human story about her heroic battles--plural--many battles with cancer, at least two kinds of cancer, over the course of 20 years. This struggle, this heroic struggle, this battle helped to transform Ruth Bader Ginsburg--then Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg--into an American icon and an inspiration to millions of Americans.…





